Gaming & Culture —

Game developers warn FCC of “balkanized” Internet

Meeting with the FCC on the last day for comments on its net neutrality …

A team of online game developers and boosters told the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday about worries that the big ISPs could fragment the Internet with "pay-for-priority" arrangements, causing economic troubles for the gaming industry similar to those created by mobile access providers.

"Software platform developers like Microsoft and Facebook pose less of a threat to innovation than infrastructure owners," one developer told the agency, according to notes of the meeting. He added that "if the Internet were balkanized, and developers had to negotiate separately with each ISP, that would be a substantial drag on innovation because it would divert resources from development."

Meeting with four FCC staffers on the agency's net neutrality docket, the participants weren't of one voice on this question. In some instances they could see scenarios in which priority access deals or paying more for higher Quality of Service (QoS) might be fair. But overall they seemed pretty nervous about the prospect. "If developers had to spend time and resources negotiating with ISPs for quality service, that would be a drag on innovation and make the platform less attractive to innovators," warned Jon Radoff, who took the meeting's notes.

The conference came on the last day of the FCC's call for comments on its proposed Internet non-discrimination rules. As we've reported, priority access is a big issue in this debate. AT&T complains that the FCC's proposals "would completely ban voluntary commercial agreements for the paid provision of certain value-added broadband services, which would needlessly deprive market participants, including content providers, from willingly obtaining services that could improve consumers' Internet experiences."

But, judging from the summary of the meeting, the market participants who met with the Commission on Thursday aren't so enthusiastic about these kind of voluntary deals.

Latency, not bandwidth

The big issue for the industry, these gamers told the FCC, isn't so much data capacity as latency—the time it takes data packets to travel to servers and then return. Latency is a special problem for online games; if the latency varies, jitter occurs. So far, most developers have managed to tackle latency difficulties in the United States, one participant noted, many of which stemmed from WiFi router equipment.

But interconnection problems between ISPs can pose huge challenges, noted Christopher Dyl. Turbine can serve up its games to Australia from servers in the United States without much trouble, while European subscribers have to get their data from game servers based in Europe. "The problem is not the distance (the speed of light) but the different interconnections between the US and Europe, compared to between the US and Australia," Dyl explained.

As more game graphic rendering gets handled up in the cloud, compensating for the limits of mobile devices, bandwidth will become more important, especially in the case of slow updates. ISPs can help with this by providing prioritized services for an extra fee. But "there will be a moral hazard," Dan Scherlis suggested. "ISPs will invest less in open access and more in services that they can provide at a premium."

And that could harm the certainty of the online gaming environment, he continued:

Predictability is extremely important for gaming developers, who must design their games based on the characteristics of the network. However, once products appear that take advantage of higher-priority QoS offerings by ISPs, new entrants will have to choose between paying for that QoS or foregoing the opportunity to compete in that space. Thus, higher-priority QoS offerings will become essential to the industry sectors that grow to rely on them, giving the ISPs another form of monopoly power that, as responsible fiduciaries, they would be obligated to exploit, in an unregulated environment.

What these developers told the FCC they definitely don't want is an environment similar to the mobile game landscape prior to the iPhone and its app stores. In Europe, subscribers could purchase third party software for most phones, they explained. But in the US, the big carriers created "walled gardens" where only applications that they sold would work.

As a consequence, carriers could demand huge percentages of developer revenue, in some instances as much as half. They could also pick a small number of content providers to work with, who, in turn, could charge developers as much as half their revenue, just for opening up a chance to sell to the telco.

They would also like to avoid the choices offered in China, where several ISPs offer customers a "superior QoS" in reaching their subscribers from their servers. "This is an easy promise to make," Chris Dyl explained. "All the ISP need do is ensure that non-ISP-hosted services suffer appreciable degradation as part of interconnection."

Slotting fees

As a final analogy, the sextet of developers offered the Commission staff an interesting historical parallel: the "slotting fees" that supermarkets and bookstores began charging food makers and publishers in the 1980s for access to market shelves. Researchers found that slotting fees put these markets beyond the reach of smaller vendors.

Sure, the group conceded—most consumers enjoy competition among grocers, but there's less so among Internet providers. "Subscriber choice in wireline Internet access (and thus in affordable broadband Internet) is sharply constrained by the choices municipalities have made in granting access to utility poles or to street trenches. Having been granted this public resource, the ISP should assume some responsibility to the public," the meeting notes conclude, "even beyond the promises they made while obtaining that access, back before the World Wide Web was invented."

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Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar

44 Reader Comments

Comparisons such as the slotting fees among grocers are absurd, just as any analogy between a material good and internet connectivity. The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Degrading speeds, cutting QoS deals, and increasing access prices are all things that are antithetical to the original idea of an open internet.

Lag is a pain! I almost ditched my service provider last December because I was having recurring lag issues in one of my games. What is scary is that I only have another option (cable) since all the DSL providers pass through Bell and that my dear Canadian government ruled that Bell was allowed to throttle my ISP that uses their network. With many other products when I get bad service I can simply switch to another provider. Not so simple with the internet. Since my current Prime Minister loves to follow your government. I dearly hope things go well on your side of the border.

I'm from Balkans and I find the title of this story insulting. Assigning such a bad attributes to regions, nations, races ... was a acceptable in Hitler's Germany but it should not be acceptable in the modern US.Btw. Hitler, in his Mein Kampf similarly stated that people of the Balkans and specially Gipsies and Slavs should vanish together with the Jews.

Originally posted by rasha:I'm from Balkans and I find the title of this story insulting. Assigning such a bad attributes to regions, nations, races ... was a acceptable in Hitler's Germany but it should not be acceptable in the modern US.Btw. Hitler, in his Mein Kampf similarly stated that people of the Balkans and specially Gipsies and Slavs should vanish together with the Jews.

Fer chrissakes people will get offended by anything nowadays. Rasha, you cannot change history. Neither can the Germans (trying to abolish anything and everything Nazi), neither can the Chinese (trying to hide the Tiananmen Square incident from the Chinese citizens).

On topic, go Net Neutrality! Can't say enough good things about this FCC. With the gaming industry coming together for the Net Neutrality fight, I see good things in the future for everyone! Except the ISP's wallets, and I care as much for them as I do the MPAA and RIAA (i.e. they can all DIAF).

They would also like to avoid the choices offered in China, where several ISPs offer customers a "superior QoS" in reaching their subscribers from their servers. "This is an easy promise to make," Chris Dyl explained. "All the ISP need do is ensure that non-ISP-hosted services suffer appreciable degradation as part of interconnection."

Why does it seem like, to me, that the Chinese are the best example of unregulated capitalism out there?

The question is, what are those chinese with QOS paying for their service, and is it above or below that of the US?

What about an 'inverse neutrality' solution? Top-level QoS is guaranteed to any website/web service below a specific level of popularity, but more popular applications have to pay? That would allow experimentation to continue unhindered (if not further promoting it, by taxing large size), while forcing heavy users (who, ostensibly, should have deep pockets thanks to the heavy use) to pay to maintain the infrastructure. That approach would also encourage the use of open standards rather than walled gardens, thereby increasing rather than reducing the benefits of network effects. For instance, if people all have their social networking needs met by using Facebook, Facebook would have to pay to maintain high QoS. If, instead, people used some open packages to construct and host their profiles and their walls either on their own machines or on a P2P distributed system, no one would need to pay anything to anyone.

Something that just struck me. May well have implications I have not fully thought through...

Originally posted by andrei.timoshenko:What about an 'inverse neutrality' solution? Top-level QoS is guaranteed to any website/web service below a specific level of popularity, but more popular applications have to pay? That would allow experimentation to continue unhindered (if not further promoting it, by taxing large size), while forcing heavy users (who, ostensibly, should have deep pockets thanks to the heavy use) to pay to maintain the infrastructure. That approach would also encourage the use of open standards rather than walled gardens, thereby increasing rather than reducing the benefits of network effects. For instance, if people all have their social networking needs met by using Facebook, Facebook would have to pay to maintain high QoS. If, instead, people used some open packages to construct and host their profiles and their walls either on their own machines or on a P2P distributed system, no one would need to pay anything to anyone.

Something that just struck me. May well have implications I have not fully thought through...

Sounds like a great system to me, and one that will never take off. ISPs would be interested in lowering the kick-in point to something so low any website will be paying, and Google and the like will lobby heavily against it, because they've also got the funds to do that.

I'd love to see that happen though, it would be like how our tax systems work, tax the ones who gain the most benefit from the system in order to improve the system. Great idea

the game insduty needs to get with those than build and make the interent standards (HTTP,ip6,ect) and make a setup that helps with lag issues.

That aside the ISPs must never be allowed to cheery pick or prioritize bandwidth....at least not on public networks, business infrastructures sure they can tier but open to the public stuff not so much..

=======================================

quote:

Originally posted by rasha:I'm from Balkans and I find the title of this story insulting. Assigning such a bad attributes to regions, nations, races ... was a acceptable in Hitler's Germany but it should not be acceptable in the modern US.Btw. Hitler, in his Mein Kampf similarly stated that people of the Balkans and specially Gipsies and Slavs should vanish together with the Jews.

The fact that you can find it in Wikipedia does not mean that it is not insulting. I'm obviously insulted. It would be like calling capital punishment using gas chamber Germanization. Or or trowing atomic bombs on Japanese cities Americanization.

quote:

The point...you misses it...ssoooooooo muchz.....lulz....

I completely agree that my comment has nothing to do with the point of the article. But that does not mean that I do not understand the article itself.

Originally posted by xef6:Comparisons such as the slotting fees among grocers are absurd, just as any analogy between a material good and internet connectivity.

Really? Limited shelf space, limited router peformance queue. The analogy is pretty accurate considering. If the store is small, they won't have a million brands. They would consolidate on best sellers to save them the labor costs of handling a large variety of inventory. Just like a router would shuttle certain services to higher priorities using QOS to get more ROI from the router.

quote:

The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

Originally posted by andrei.timoshenko:What about an 'inverse neutrality' solution? Top-level QoS is guaranteed to any website/web service below a specific level of popularity, but more popular applications have to pay? That would allow experimentation to continue unhindered (if not further promoting it, by taxing large size), while forcing heavy users (who, ostensibly, should have deep pockets thanks to the heavy use) to pay to maintain the infrastructure. That approach would also encourage the use of open standards rather than walled gardens, thereby increasing rather than reducing the benefits of network effects. For instance, if people all have their social networking needs met by using Facebook, Facebook would have to pay to maintain high QoS. If, instead, people used some open packages to construct and host their profiles and their walls either on their own machines or on a P2P distributed system, no one would need to pay anything to anyone.

Something that just struck me. May well have implications I have not fully thought through...

I can see the headlines now:

Rush accuses Obama FCC of class warfare on the World Wide Web

It's a good idea. It really is. I just think that certain factions would take your meaning, ingest it, and excrete some foul-smelling other thing that resembles nothing like it.

Originally posted by andrei.timoshenko:What about an 'inverse neutrality' solution? Top-level QoS is guaranteed to any website/web service below a specific level of popularity, but more popular applications have to pay? That would allow experimentation to continue unhindered (if not further promoting it, by taxing large size), while forcing heavy users (who, ostensibly, should have deep pockets thanks to the heavy use) to pay to maintain the infrastructure. That approach would also encourage the use of open standards rather than walled gardens, thereby increasing rather than reducing the benefits of network effects. For instance, if people all have their social networking needs met by using Facebook, Facebook would have to pay to maintain high QoS. If, instead, people used some open packages to construct and host their profiles and their walls either on their own machines or on a P2P distributed system, no one would need to pay anything to anyone.

I think it would be better to outline minimum requirements for traffic if the ISP decides to enter QOS arrangements. So the government would require all ISPs with QOS arrangements to meet a certain metric for best-effort traffic (lowest QOS level) and require them to allow certain types of traffic to be set to higher QOS traffic to put high need services on an equal footing like teleconferencing/voice, games and streaming services.

If they can't meet the required metrics, they cannot have QOS agreements. The metrics can be tracked by the FCC or by watchdog groups using simple software and volunteers at various ends of the networks.

Originally posted by xef6:Comparisons such as the slotting fees among grocers are absurd, just as any analogy between a material good and internet connectivity.

Really? Limited shelf space, limited router peformance queue. The analogy is pretty accurate considering. If the store is small, they won't have a million brands. They would consolidate on best sellers to save them the labor costs of handling a large variety of inventory. Just like a router would shuttle certain services to higher priorities using QOS to get more ROI from the router.

Except there is literally zero marginal cost to handle more services with a router whereas a store has a non-zero marginal cost to carry more brands of products. So your analogy is completely wrong.

1. Lay down government-owned infrastructure using the best technologies that we can reasonably afford.

2. Grant access to consumers and content providers (web sites) for reasonable fees that go directly to maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. (No profit margins, no markups, no shareholders.

3. Allow ISPs to keep existing infrastructure, and allow them to do with it as they like—even if that means blowing NN to hell on their own pipelines. They can also sell their pipes to each other or to the government, which would then incorporate these pipes into its own infrastructure.

That way, you can still have your private sector tiered systems, QoS, monopolies, duopolies, etc.—but the playing field is effectively leveled.

Sure, Comcast can sign an exclusivity agreement with Steam—but now Steam has to justify to its customers that the added Comcast fee is really worth the money for that $0.42 sale.

The fact that you can find it in Wikipedia does not mean that it is not insulting. I'm obviously insulted. It would be like calling capital punishment using gas chamber Germanization. Or or trowing atomic bombs on Japanese cities Americanization.

quote:

The point...you misses it...ssoooooooo muchz.....lulz....

I completely agree that my comment has nothing to do with the point of the article. But that does not mean that I do not understand the article itself.

Word definition and context , get over it. Next you will be insult by the use of negro for black beans..........

What really needs to happen is to have Congress or the FCC outlaw and invalidate any previous network exclusivity contracts (cities and apartment buildings can no longer make exclusive contracts with Comcast, Time Warner, etc). Likewise, there need to be standards set in place for laying out infrastructure anywhere (no more haggling with people and businesses for every few feet of cable laid).

Putting these regulations into practice would encourage competition and make it far easier for ISPs to build out their infrastructure.

Originally posted by Plasmoid:Except there is literally zero marginal cost to handle more services with a router whereas a store has a non-zero marginal cost to carry more brands of products. So your analogy is completely wrong.

Yes, because a router has INFINITE RESOURCES making it ZERO MARGINAL COST. *rolls his eyes* You're mixing nomen clature from two seperate discussions/dogma (obviously robin-hood software pirating and net neutrality).

Routers have a set number of cycles (depending on how powerful it is) and a queue. The more cycles (faster processor/memory), the faster it shuffles through the queue. Any traffic that arrives when the queue is full gets dropped. Quality of Service was developed so that important packets coming in to a router with a full queue will still be accepted and routed, dropping lower priority packets that will need to be resent later.

It's not Zero marginal cost. They spend X dollars on a router that can handle Y traffic. To get the maximum ROI and to improve traffic throughput, you want to tailor your QOS settings to reduce the overall dropped packets.

Net Neutrality doesn't like that. It wants all traffic sorted and dropped with equal regard, thus negating any efficiencies that can be gained by using QOS.

It's absurd to completely outlaw the use of a helpful technology because worrywarts are afraid it can be abused. If you're afraid it'll be abused, help devise safeguards to catch the abuse but don't ban it all together.

Originally posted by Plasmoid:Except there is literally zero marginal cost to handle more services with a router whereas a store has a non-zero marginal cost to carry more brands of products. So your analogy is completely wrong.

Yes, because a router has INFINITE RESOURCES making it ZERO MARGINAL COST. *rolls his eyes* You're mixing nomen clature from two seperate discussions/dogma (obviously robin-hood software pirating and net neutrality).

Routers have a set number of cycles (depending on how powerful it is) and a queue. The more cycles (faster processor/memory), the faster it shuffles through the queue. Any traffic that arrives when the queue is full gets dropped. Quality of Service was developed so that important packets coming in to a router with a full queue will still be accepted and routed, dropping lower priority packets that will need to be resent later.

It's not Zero marginal cost. They spend X dollars on a router that can handle Y traffic. To get the maximum ROI and to improve traffic throughput, you want to tailor your QOS settings to reduce the overall dropped packets.

Net Neutrality doesn't like that. It wants all traffic sorted and dropped with equal regard, thus negating any efficiencies that can be gained by using QOS.

It's absurd to completely outlaw the use of a helpful technology because worrywarts are afraid it can be abused. If you're afraid it'll be abused, help devise safeguards to catch the abuse but don't ban it all together.

It's clear that you don't understand what you are talking about because you bring up copyright infringement. No one is talking about that here. We are talking about network neutrality. Again, 'supporting' more services for a router is free because routers only care about the amount of traffic, not the type. A router sending 10MB/sec to 100 websites is the same as sending 10MB/sec to 2 websites. A store selling 100 brands of cheerios will consume more display space than 2 brands of cheerios.

The only measure of ROI is pushing through as much data as possible. Ironically enough, a non-NN router is going to be slower than an NN router.

I'd really like to hear a good argument for why NN is bad or should be avoided. Give me a service which cannot be provided in an NN world.

The fact that you can find it in Wikipedia does not mean that it is not insulting. I'm obviously insulted. It would be like calling capital punishment using gas chamber Germanization. Or or trowing atomic bombs on Japanese cities Americanization.

I've more than once heard 'Americanization' used in terms of dropping bombs on other countries. I find it pretty funny

A fair point, really, although using such a massive exaggeration makes it a touch hard to take you seriously. Look into Godwin's Law sometime.

The proper use of Balkanisation, if used like Americanization and Germanization is, should probably be the Balkan culture influencing other places (like how Germanisation is about German language/culture/etc being pushed on other nations and Americanisation is about how everyone eats fast food everywhere now). The problem with that is that Balkan culture is indeed fractured anyway. It's not really a bad thing nor meant to be an insult, something can be split into parts and that can be a good thing. I have family from Croatia who call themselves Croatian, although technically they were born in Yugoslavia. Crotia is their history and their home, not a huge state that had a whole lot of differences.

But it's not worth complaining to Ars about it, it's a quote. Specifically it was from from Jon Radoff of GamerDNA

Originally posted by chronomitch:What really needs to happen is to have Congress or the FCC outlaw and invalidate any previous network exclusivity contracts (cities and apartment buildings can no longer make exclusive contracts with Comcast, Time Warner, etc).

Done in 1992 and 2007, respectively. Both done by FCC regulation, rather than legislation. I can provide citations to both, as well as the year each became active, should you desire.

quote:

chronomitch:Likewise, there need to be standards set in place for laying out infrastructure anywhere (no more haggling with people and businesses for every few feet of cable laid).

They're called public rights of way, and standards for using them exist. I admit they differ from municipality to municipality, but that makes sense to me, given that soils, poles, wildlife, and plants vary quite a bit from region to region, and one standard probably wouldn't fit everywhere.

quote:

chronomitch:Putting these regulations into practice would encourage competition and make it far easier for ISPs to build out their infrastructure.

Funny how 17 years of no exclusive CATV franchise agreements hasn't appeared to do much for CATV infrastructure competition. I suggest you find some other government regulation to blame.

Originally posted by xef6:[QUOTE] The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

I've asked you once to provide some evidence that this is 'misinformation.' Perhaps you haven't had time to do so yet?

Originally posted by xef6:[QUOTE] The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

I've asked you once to provide some evidence that this is 'misinformation.' Perhaps you haven't had time to do so yet?

Actually, you're completely right; MatthiasF is spewing utter garbage. The numbers are simple, and they come directly from the ISP financial reports. Here's some high-speed data statistics from the freely downloadable annual reports, numbers are in millions:(Excuse the crappy formatting, whitespace isn't preserved and this font isn't unispace)

Originally posted by xef6:[QUOTE] The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

I've asked you once to provide some evidence that this is 'misinformation.' Perhaps you haven't had time to do so yet?

Actually, you're completely right; MatthiasF is spewing utter garbage. The numbers are simple, and they come directly from the ISP financial reports. Here's some high-speed data statistics from the freely downloadable annual reports, numbers are in millions:(Excuse the crappy formatting, whitespace isn't preserved and this font isn't unispace)

In this thread MathiasF implied that those numbers don't accurately account for Time-Warner's (and presumably other CATV providers) costs. I asked MathiasF at that time how we can find out more accurate numbers, or how we can better interpret the numbers that T-W is putting out. He never replied, but here he is disputing the accuracy of numbers from SEC filings. Again.

How does one even define "marginal cost" in this context? There's 0 relation between the raw number of bits moved through a router or pipe and the cost it takes to run that router/pipe. However, the higher the amount of data moved the higher the expected amount of data at any one time, and that is subject to the resources of the router/pipe. Larger and faster ones cost more to run than smaller, slower ones.

So depending on how you define it, it would be true to say that there's 0 marginal cost for transfer, but there's definitely a marginal cost for bandwidth (everybody remember the difference?).

If they want to charge for "extra quality service", they should provide it using a private network, not the one they are already selling as shared lines. Any "special" extra services would require everyone else getting less, unless there is more than enough bandwidth to go around (in which case, why not just bump everyone up).

two words that will put all these ISPs in there place and even a first year law student will know this. "Commerce Clause" When the ISPs are interfereing with business delivery that the parties are paying for the Big Stick will come down on them.

Guys, it's not really a problem yet. We are dealing with hypothetical problems. If, for example, Comcast wanted to charge Arstechnica for visitor traffic, I think the free speech nature of the Internet would not allow much of that, unlike grocery store shelves where the grocer can censor and deny brands based on whims, because the store is his property. Yes a router is property but there's no way a network device can be configured realistically to censor websites for 'undesirable speech' like if an ISP wanted to censor speech against their practices. That would take a huge amount of man-hours and add a lot of latency and other costs.

The real backers of Network Neutrality are corporate and business interests using a veil of consumer rights. If you are passionate that Network Neutrality should happen because you read an article somewhere, you are probably susceptible to corporate propaganda that is worded in anti-corporate lingo. After all, corporations use government regulations against their competitors, and also to solidify their place in the market.

* It is unconstitutional. Where in the constitution is this justified?

* Rule of Whim - just because you think something is a good idea, doesn't mean it is a good idea.

* The tyranny of good intentions.

* It's not a problem yet. Really, except for maybe torrent traffic. This 'problem' has been blown far out of proportion.

* The actual problem is not created by free markets, but by government. Now NN advocates want more government and I assure you that will just create more problems. The duopoly ISP marketplace where ISP's are given government granted monopolies. This is the real cause of the hypothetical problem. A monopoly can become arrogant and detrimental to the consumer because it doesn't have to meet consumer demand because, well, they have a monopoly and the police with guns and prisons back that up in force if that if necessary.

And perhaps the most important reason..

* The federal government should have no real power over the Internet. Why? Freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom to innovate and do business. How can NN threaten that? Because it introduces a situation where 'creep' can start. Just like how NN is being proposed as the solution to the government-created problem of the dupoly ISP market. The stateist mindset dictates that for every problem government creates, more government will be used to solve it. Thus we have an indefinite loop. I am going to save you decades of stress by saying that the government will never really solve the problems they create, otherwise they'd be out of a job.

As a matter of principle, the federal government should not be involved in any significant way with the Internet. Ultimately the reason I say this because humans should not be slaves to bureaucrats and the adversarial and unproductive political process. We should be free. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand that the Internet an incredible place for freedom to thrive and multiply.

Here's the solution I propose: end the ISP duopoly! Demand that your county government either end the duopoly or rewrite their agreement and implement NN on the county government level. This isn't the 1970's, technology is good enough now that we don't need the duopoly.

The fact that you can find it in Wikipedia does not mean that it is not insulting. I'm obviously insulted. It would be like calling capital punishment using gas chamber Germanization. Or or trowing atomic bombs on Japanese cities Americanization.

I've more than once heard 'Americanization' used in terms of dropping bombs on other countries. I find it pretty funny

A fair point, really, although using such a massive exaggeration makes it a touch hard to take you seriously. Look into Godwin's Law sometime.

The proper use of Balkanisation, if used like Americanization and Germanization is, should probably be the Balkan culture influencing other places (like how Germanisation is about German language/culture/etc being pushed on other nations and Americanisation is about how everyone eats fast food everywhere now). The problem with that is that Balkan culture is indeed fractured anyway. It's not really a bad thing nor meant to be an insult, something can be split into parts and that can be a good thing. I have family from Croatia who call themselves Croatian, although technically they were born in Yugoslavia. Crotia is their history and their home, not a huge state that had a whole lot of differences.

But it's not worth complaining to Ars about it, it's a quote. Specifically it was from from Jon Radoff of GamerDNA

I dunno I find the use of "Americanization" as a definition to mean "dumbing it down" pretty accurate...and I am a US citizen 0-o

Originally posted by xef6:[QUOTE] The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

I've asked you once to provide some evidence that this is 'misinformation.' Perhaps you haven't had time to do so yet?

The cost of running the network that the broadband service runs on is shared with the television or phone services for the respective company. They take ONE LINE out of an entire report and repeat it like that's the only piece of the picture that's important. What about Capital expenditures for upgrades, customer equipment, etc., and the labor to do all of that? Or the debt taken on over the years to expand or upgrade? They ignore it because if they factored in the billions of dollars involved, their 3000%+ numbers would shrink down to 10-13% at most.

This is CLEARLY mentioned in the reports they're citing but again they are ignoring it. For instance, page 28 of this Comcast document just below where they grab the numbers they repeat.

High-speed Internet expenses and phone expenses include certaindirect costs identified by us for providing these services. Otherrelated costs associated with providing these services are generallyshared among all our cable services and are not allocated tothese captions.

But they don't want to admit this, don't read the reports at all or are wholely incompetent in their positions.

Originally posted by chronomitch:What really needs to happen is to have Congress or the FCC outlaw and invalidate any previous network exclusivity contracts (cities and apartment buildings can no longer make exclusive contracts with Comcast, Time Warner, etc).

Done in 1992 and 2007, respectively. Both done by FCC regulation, rather than legislation. I can provide citations to both, as well as the year each became active, should you desire.

quote:

chronomitch:Likewise, there need to be standards set in place for laying out infrastructure anywhere (no more haggling with people and businesses for every few feet of cable laid).

They're called public rights of way, and standards for using them exist. I admit they differ from municipality to municipality, but that makes sense to me, given that soils, poles, wildlife, and plants vary quite a bit from region to region, and one standard probably wouldn't fit everywhere.

quote:

chronomitch:Putting these regulations into practice would encourage competition and make it far easier for ISPs to build out their infrastructure.

Funny how 17 years of no exclusive CATV franchise agreements hasn't appeared to do much for CATV infrastructure competition. I suggest you find some other government regulation to blame.

Kind of hard to compete with an infrastructure that's already in place, especially one that was financed originally by being a monopoly at the time it was built. Line-sharing rules fixed that, but big business got that revoked pretty quickly. Did you read the Ars article quoting the study that shows that faster, cheaper, broadband happens when the infrastructure is divorced from the ISPs and sold at equal pricing to any ISP that wants to buy it?

The cost of entry now is too high for anyone to even try to compete. Even when municipalities try to build their own infrastructure with public money, they get taken to court by the entrenched ISPs and some state governments get lobbied into passing laws against it.

Originally posted by Plasmoid:It's clear that you don't understand what you are talking about because you bring up copyright infringement. No one is talking about that here. We are talking about network neutrality. Again, 'supporting' more services for a router is free because routers only care about the amount of traffic, not the type. A router sending 10MB/sec to 100 websites is the same as sending 10MB/sec to 2 websites. A store selling 100 brands of cheerios will consume more display space than 2 brands of cheerios.

You used a phrase that's most used in software copyright infringement arguements, "Zero marginal cost". It doesn't exist for computers passing traffic, since each computer has a finite ability depending on it's resources, just like a grocery store only has so much floorspace. My point is that a router that can handle 10MBs (using your numbers), that's the floorspace. Imagine if a grocery store wasn't organized into rows, or like items put together. How much chaos would there be from shoppers wandering around or how frustrating it would be to shop there? Now imagine stores at various sizes like this. That's a router without QOS. That's an NN router.

A real router today uses QOS to allow important traffic to pass through the chaos unimpeded, but it's mostly limited to network management protocols. So the rest of us are thrown together in the Best Effort pile to fight it out. I don't think that's fair. If I'm using VOIP, I should have priority over someone downloading a porn movie. The quality of the call will greatly improve and the porn addict only has to wait a few extra seconds to enjoy himself. (Put quotes around enjoy if you feel it's necessary.)

I also think I should get this ability FOR FREE if ISPs want to either put their services at higher QOS settings or sell that ability to others, and it's kept tabs on by the government to make sure any agreements aren't causing horrible routing issues (which is well within the bounds of the FCC's mandate in the 1996 bill, btw).

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The only measure of ROI is pushing through as much data as possible. Ironically enough, a non-NN router is going to be slower than an NN router.

I disagree. A router without QOS will have higher dropped packets. More dropped packets means more resent packets cluttering the queue. It's a compounding issue if the router is overwhelmed. But with QOS, services that need higher prioritization like video streaming, VOIP, etc., won't need to resend as many packets, their service will improve, no one's traffic is harmed overall since packets were going to be dropped anyway while the router itself handles more traffic with less effort (by avoiding resent packets).

This could even mean the ISPs would increase your throughput, which is the biggest gripe in these discussions, but take that with a grain of salt. Or a company's ability to monitor and react to traffic patterns using QOS might even give them a competitive edge and they could offer more bandwidth for less to draw subscribers. But who knows unless we try it?

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I'd really like to hear a good argument for why NN is bad or should be avoided. Give me a service which cannot be provided in an NN world.

My only argument against NN is QOS. I like QOS, it was invented for a damn good reason and I don't want it outlawed because people are paranoid about how it's used. Even though, mind you, that they can easily keep tabs on how their traffic is being prioritized. Because of that, I really think the majority of the Pro-NN side is fearmongers or ISP bashers without any foundation for their claims or worries.

Edit note: My brain is horrible at 6 AM. NO MORE POSTING BEFORE CAFFEINE!

Originally posted by xef6:[QUOTE] The implication that ISPs need more sources of revenue is similarly absurd, seeing as many enjoy profits of 1000-3000% for their high-speed data services (ex. TCW, Comcast).

Repeating the same old NN misinformation. That explains why you couldn't understand the analogy...you didn't want to see it.

I've asked you once to provide some evidence that this is 'misinformation.' Perhaps you haven't had time to do so yet?

The cost of running the network that the broadband service runs on is shared with the television or phone services for the respective company. They take ONE LINE out of an entire report and repeat it like that's the only piece of the picture that's important. What about Capital expenditures for upgrades, customer equipment, etc., and the labor to do all of that? Or the debt taken on over the years to expand or upgrade? They ignore it because if they factored in the billions of dollars involved, their 3000%+ numbers would shrink down to 10-13% at most.

This is CLEARLY mentioned in the reports they're citing but again they are ignoring it. For instance, page 28 of this Comcast document just below where they grab the numbers they repeat.

High-speed Internet expenses and phone expenses include certaindirect costs identified by us for providing these services. Otherrelated costs associated with providing these services are generallyshared among all our cable services and are not allocated tothese captions.

But they don't want to admit this, don't read the reports at all or are wholely incompetent in their positions.

The 'misinformation' is that TWC et al are making plenty of profit, and do not need additional sources of revenue. You claim that there are unidentified, and apparently unidentifiable (because they're not broken out for the ISP caption) costs that make that claim false.

Unfortunately for your argument, even if there are unidentified costs, that doesn't tell us anything at all about whether or not TWC et al are really making plenty of profit or not, nor does it tell us anything at all about whether or not they need additional sources of revenue.

So far as I can tell, your argument amounts to 'but you aren't telling the whole story!' and you refuse to tell the whole story to us yourself. I'm able to do math. I'm able to follow a reasoned argument. I'm willing to entertain the argument that TWC is not actually making the amazing profits that show up on their earnings reports, and that in fact they're in desparate need of cash from those ebil content producers and bandwidth hogs who are using up all their bandwidth.

I'm willing to do this, should anyone provide evidence that content producers are using 'unfair' amounts of bandwidth, that bandwidth hogs are real and a significant problem, and that those as-yet unidentified costs are both real and significant. So far you've done nothing of the sort. Instead, you've chosen bald assertion, insult, and vague hypothetical claims as your tools of argument. You'll pardon me for being unimpressed and unconvinced.

[edit:]And then you write something like this:

quote:

MathiasF:My only argument against NN is QOS. I like QOS, it was invented for a damn good reason and I don't want it outlawed because people are paranoid about how it's used. Even though, mind you, that they can easily keep tabs on how their traffic is being prioritized. Because of that, I really think the majority of the Pro-NN side is fearmongers or ISP bashers without any foundation for their claims or worries.

So far as I know, none of the proposed NN legislation would prevent an ISP from using QoS. I'd like you to show me where it's prohibited in currently proposed legislation.